


falling on your knees [Trapped]

by aceofjapan



Series: YOI Angst Week Ficlets [7]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Anxious Katsuki Yuuri, Bathrooms, Don't copy to another site, Emetophobia, First Meetings, Gen, Secrets, Sochi Grand Prix Final, YOI Angst Week 2020, implied/referenced eating disorder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:02:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27623777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aceofjapan/pseuds/aceofjapan
Summary: “Are you alright in there? Do you need any help?”Yuuri freezes.He hadn’t heard anyone come into the bathroom. He knows he was alone when he entered, he checked. The sound of the door opening must have been covered by his retching. And now there’s someone in here with him. Someone who heard him throw up. And not just anyone, no… Yuuri would recognise that voice anywhere.He’s stuck in a bathroom stall, sweaty, panicked, with vomit on his chin and his hand, and Victor Nikiforov is outside.Promo Drabble for YOI Angst Week 2020 (December 7-13).
Relationships: Katsuki Yuuri & Victor Nikiforov
Series: YOI Angst Week Ficlets [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1954669
Comments: 18
Kudos: 88
Collections: YOI Angst Week 2020





	falling on your knees [Trapped]

**Author's Note:**

> Hi friends,
> 
> This was written as a promo drabble for **YOI Angst Week 2020, which takes place on December 7-13**! Specifically for Day 7 and the prompt Trapped!
> 
> As such, please heed the warnings.
> 
> You can find out more about YOI Angst Week on [Twitter](http://twitter.com/yoiangstweek/) and [Tumblr](http://yoiangstweek.tumblr.com). 
> 
> This ficlet is a glimpse into a longer fic I am currently writing, so there's going to be some context clues missing and a pretty open ending because it's taken out of the middle of the story. Hope you enjoy it nonetheless!

Yuuri’s stomach convulses painfully, making him hunch over. His throat burns, and so do his eyes. His fingers are curled tightly, nails digging into his palms, his breathing laboured.

It’s been so long, he’d almost forgotten how it feels. Almost forgotten how it makes his whole body seize up, how much every bone in his body revolts against this. He’s forgotten how much it hurts.

There is an ugly splattering noise as his vomit hits the toilet bowl, and the reminder of how disgustingly familiar it is just makes Yuuri feel more nauseous. He retches, and throws up again.

Then he sinks back on his heels as best he can in his skates, the ends of his blades uncomfortable poking into his bum in their hard guards. He tries to catch his breath, spits some bitter tasting drool into the toilet.

“Are you alright in there? Do you need any help?”

Yuuri freezes.

He hadn’t heard anyone come into the bathroom. He knows he was alone when he entered, he checked. The sound of the door opening must have been covered by his retching. And now there’s someone in here with him. Someone who heard him throw up. And not just anyone, no… Yuuri would recognise that voice anywhere.

He’s stuck in a bathroom stall, sweaty, panicked, with vomit on his chin and his hand, and Victor Nikiforov is outside.

He’s trying to keep taking deep breaths, hastily grabbing some toilet paper to wipe away the traces of what just happened, when there’s a shuffle of steps at the other side of the door, evidently Victor coming closer, because his voice is just on the other side of the door when he speaks again.

“Are you okay?”, he asks once more, and he sounds genuinely concerned and Yuuri wants to cry, “Is there anyone I can call?”

Yuuri clears his throat and with a lot of effort forces himself to speak.

“No, it’s… I’m alright, sorry”, he says, his voice still strained and hoarse from throwing up, “it’s nothing, I just… I get really nervous before competitions.”

It’s an old, familiar excuse, one that he hasn’t had to use in so long, but that still rolls off his tongue with ease, with a convincing enough sincerity, because it’s not technically a lie.

“Oh”, Victor says on the other side of the door, “You’re a skater?”

Yuuri muffles a whine, annoyed that he just gave Victor a big clue to his identity, but at the same time relieved that he clearly doesn’t already know who he’s speaking to. This is distinctly not how Yuuri pictured his first conversation with Victor going.

He swallows.

“Please, don’t let me keep you”, he says, trying to force some kind of levity into his voice, “I’ll be fine, I just get really nauseous when I’m nervous. I’ll be okay in a minute.”

“Are you sure?”, comes Victor’s voice from the other side. “I could get your coach for you? Make sure you’re okay to skate?”

This, to Yuuri’s mortification, sends a spike or irritation lancing through him.

“Right”, he says with a bitter laugh, “because surely if I pulled out every time I threw up before a skate, I would have made it to the Grand Prix Final.”

He bites his lips as soon as he’s said it, but the words are out there. There is a long moment of silence on the other side, and Yuuri tries not to panic.

“Ah, sorry”, Victor finally says, voice hesitant, “I shouldn’t have butted in. I’m sure you know your own limits.”

Yuuri nods silently inside his stall, but he can’t think of any kind of appropriate response.

“I’m, uh…”, Victor goes on after a moment, “I wasn’t trying to get you to pull out or anything. I was just concerned.”

His voice sounds sheepish, and Yuuri realises—he doesn’t want Yuuri to think he was trying to manipulate him. His competition.

Yuuri huffs out a breath, though there isn’t much humour in it—Yuuri may not know Victor personally, but he knows enough about him to be sure that Victor would never stoop so low as that.

“It’s okay. I wasn’t thinking that.” He opens his mouth to say more, but there’s nothing. What can he possibly say?

There’s another long silence, then more shuffling on the other side.

“Well, I’ll leave you alone then, I guess”, Victor says, “I hope you feel better soon. Ah…”, he hesitates, “if I run across Coach Celestino, should I send him your way?”

Yuuri’s blood runs cold. He wasn’t sure which it was that made his breath catch with panic: the fact that Victor obviously knew who he was, or the thought of Ciao-Ciao finding out that Yuuri had been caught throwing up before a skate.

“How”, he pressed out between shallow breaths, and his voice sounded flat in his own ears, “how you do know who my coach is?”

He can hear Victor sigh on the other side of the door.

“Well… it’s not like there’s a lot of people here who are about to take to the ice. And I know all of them well enough to recognise their voice… save for one. I’ll admit the American accent threw me for a loop at first, but considering you’re training in Detroit I suppose it does make sense.”

Yuuri can’t speak. He can’t move, can’t breathe. Victor knows who he is. All these years, all his hard work, and his first time interacting with Victor is because he heard Yuuri throw up. He must be disgusted, or, even worse, _pitying_ him. And now he’s going to tell Ciao-Ciao, who won’t let Yuuri skate and he’ll lose his chance at being on the ice with Victor and he’ll never get another one.

He’ll never get to prove himself.

It has all been in vain.

“I guess I’ll go then”, Victor says with another sigh, “Good luck, Katsuki.”

Hearing his own name from Victor’s lips somehow startles Yuuri out of his paralysis.

“Victor, wait”, he croaks.

The steps outside his stall stop. Yuuri can see the shadow that is cast onto the floor through the crack at the bottom of the door.

Yuuri licks his lips, swallows.

“Please don’t tell Celestino about this if you see him”, he finally says.

The shadow doesn’t move.

“Why not?”, Victor asks, his voice carefully neutral.

Yuuri takes a deep breath and rattles off his usual spiel, trying to make it as convincing. It’s not like he got caught all that often. But lying has long since become second nature to him, and there’s always an excuse for anything quick on his tongue.

“I just… don’t want to worry him. He can be a bit overprotective and… he knows about my nerves, but if he knew I threw up, he might really decide that it’s better for me not to skate. And I—…”, he squeezes his eyes closed as he slips from lies to easily into the territory of something that is too true, too raw, but he can’t stop himself. “I have to skate. I need to do this. I can’t let this chance go.”

“Even at the expense of your own health?”, Victor’s voice comes quietly from the other side of the door.

Yuuri huffs. “There’s no risk to my health”, he says, and he means it, “no more than any other time I go on the ice, or any of us. I’m not sick. Just nervous. As you said, I know my own limits. I know what I can do.” He’s surprised by how firm his voice sounds. “I can skate.”

There’s a long moment of silence again, and then the shadow on the floor moves away.

For a moment Yuuri thinks Victor has just left, has decided to leave Yuuri to his own devices, or to go and get Celestino after all. But then his voice can be heard again, soft in the empty bathroom.

“Will you come out here, Katsuki? Yuuri, if I may call you that? Will you let me see you?”

For a moment, Yuuri wants to refuse. But he knows his time is running out—the warm up will begin soon. And if this is what he has to do to convince Victor not to rat him out to his coach… if he has to make himself look collected and healthy—and he is healthy, he reminds himself, _he is_ —to make Victor believe him… then he will.

He gets up on legs that are a little stiff now from kneeling on the floor for so long, stretches them carefully until he can stand firmly on his skate guards. He flushes the toilet, smooths down his Team Japan jacket over his costume, takes a deep breath. He lifts his head, squares his shoulders, trying to look more sure of himself than he really is. He’s not going to let Victor think any worse of him than he likely already does.

He reaches up, willing his hands not to shake, and unlocks the door.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. 
> 
> You can find me on [Twitter](http://twitter.com/nihidea_art), and I have a [Discord server](https://discord.gg/qEPUbsr) that has a dedicated section for Angst Week, if you're interested!
> 
> This is the last of the promo ficlets for Angst Week, so I hope you enjoyed them! I'm looking forward to seeing all of your creations for this event very, very soon ❤  
> Feel free to share your own previews and snippets on social media and tag yoiangstweek so I can share!
> 
> In the meantime, I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comment section! 💜💜💜


End file.
